Chapter 40
Reagan
The Audience lasted four hours, though it felt closer to ten.
By the final pleas he wasn’t entirely sure his answers formed coherent sentences.
Reagan had meant to address each petitioner properly, but with so many things filling his plate, they had reduced the number of sessions, which meant more than one town crammed the room.
“Jane and the tutor are ready,” Cerridwen warned as they stepped out of the chamber.
Reagan swore silently. The last thing he wanted was to be divined for. But perhaps they would at least tell him he could expect a full night of sleep. That would be glorious.
There was a chance they would get proof that his curse had been meddled with by a time weaver. He still didn’t know whether he would use it, even if she managed to find it.
Jane hadn’t wielded on her own. He was no longer sure she ever would. Perhaps the relic had damaged her access permanently.
It served him right to be wrong. And now he would meet another noblewoman. And since he could not rage, he drank. He hid. He prowled the Northern Forest more than he did his own home. Above all, he avoided her.
Jane stayed with her father for most of the time.
Reagan had been curious to meet him, though he tried not to linger on how quickly the man had shifted from worrying about his daughters to worrying about himself.
He had expected questions when he admitted he loved Jane, braced to admit that his daughter had rejected him.
Yet somehow that didn’t seem to matter to the man.
It left a sour taste in Reagan’s mouth.
Jane didn’t seem to notice it. She had recognised the unavoidable consequence that followed a human learning about the mageborn, and her first instinct was to fight Malory on it.
Cerridwen passed through the threshold of the visitors’ chamber, and Reagan followed.
It would be a small meeting without Varian for obvious reasons.
He moved to Jane’s side of the table and took the chair that faced hers, the divination tutor standing behind her. His Second and Third settled on the opposite side of the table.
“Let us get this over with.” He exhaled, resting one arm on the table as though that made him appear unconcerned.
A goblet of water waited before him.
“My Lord,” Laerune said with a head bow, then turned to Jane. “Lord Reagan will bleed into the cup. Three drops will suffice. You will drink it. His blood will create a connection to his essence and allow you to see his thread.”
At the corner of his vision, he saw her shift, clearly uneasy. Reagan clenched his teeth. What if she saw something dreadful? What if she didn’t want to do this at all?
“You don’t have to do this,” he muttered, staring at the cup. “We can find another way to prove that Madden interfered.”
There was silence, and he hoped she was reconsidering.
“Can you look at me?” Jane asked.
He turned. Her expression was steady, almost serene. “If there is proof that he tried to ruin your life or curse Mountheim that I can find, I will get it,” she said, sounding like a perfect staff member.
“Good.” He sliced his palm with a lick of power, the cut stinging faintly as he let three drops fall inside the goblet.
He closed the cut with barely a conscious intention and swirled the water before sliding the cup to her.
“You may drink, Jane,” Laerune said.
Her throat moved as she swallowed, and Reagan’s gaze tracked the path of his own blood as she drank. He found himself staring at the buttons of her white cotton shirt and the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Her free hand pressed into the dark denim of her trousers in a small, grounding motion.
“I’m ready,” Jane said, setting the goblet aside.
Laerune inclined her head, resting a hand on Jane’s shoulder, siphoning to her. “You know what to do.”
Jane’s lashes fell over her freckles as she closed her eyes. Silence deepened until he could hear his own breathing and tried to recall anything of value from his boyhood studies of divination. Only fragments of theory and a few legends about Zara remained.
He scratched his eyebrow. Waited. Considered calling for the tutor before a gasp cut through the quiet.
Jane’s brows knotted, her fingers curled into a white-knuckled grip. Her face drained of colour, and then the veins around her eyes became starker, flaring with essence, as though mana surged through them, etching glowing paths beneath her skin.
Her breathing grew heavier, her mouth slackening as if she strained against something unseen. Reagan didn’t like how that looked. He leaned forward and caught the soft groan torn from her.
“No.” The word escaped her in a whisper.
He reached for her knee before thinking. At the same moment, Laerune warned, “Better not touch her.”
It was a second too late. Jane’s expression shifted. When her eyes opened, they were white enough to look rolled back into her skull.
When Jane smiled, it was not her smile.
“Hello, ruinous Lord,” said a voice that slithered from her throat, sinuous and wrong.
Reagan recoiled so violently that his spine struck the chair. The few candles scattered around the room cast their tremulous light upon her bright white globes, brimming with power.
It chilled his blood.
Judging from Laerune’s stunned expression, she had not expected this. The tutor dropped to her knees with a thump beside Jane’s chair.
“Ever hungry for action, ruinous Lord. Ever blind to the cost,” the entity sang, its words echoing from some depth within her.
“Where is Jane?” Reagan asked, steady through sheer force. He had no idea whether she was in danger, whether the Chantress could harm her from within. He had never heard of this happening in divination. If he had, he would never have forgotten something so vile.
“Diviners bend to no sovereign,” the entity replied. “They heed only my voice through the threads.”
His chest pounded painfully. “Forgive my lack of judgement. If you would release her, I…”
Jane laughed. Or rather, the thing inside her laughed. The veined light around her eyes darkened to something bruised. A bead of blood formed at the corner of her eye and slid down her cheek.
Reagan stopped breathing altogether.
The Chantress spoke then in the ancient language. He understood none of it except a phrase that might have referred to small and mortal life. The words made him still.
No one breathed. Laerune stayed kneeling, head bowed. Reagan didn’t know if speaking would make matters worse.
“Forgive me,” he rasped, lowering his head.
The entity leaned back, crimson tears streaking her cheeks, and regarded him with a disdain that reduced him to less than a speck of dust in her universe.
“Do not command my diviners,” she ordered in a voice dripping with menace.
He bowed further, debating whether he should kneel, nearly doing so when Jane’s body slackened.
He lurched forward before she could strike the table, gathering her limp form into his arms as his ass hit the floor.
“I’ll call for Hildegard,” Cerridwen said before she sprung from her chair.
“Is she breathing?” Barracus asked, circling the table.
Reagan found her pulse. Slow, but there. He nodded, too rattled to speak.
Laerune had risen and stared at the empty chair with a bewildered expression. She lifted her hands. Two red petals lay in her palm, the exact colour of Jane’s blood.
Reagan held Jane tighter, his pulse leaping in his throat.
“My Lord,” Xanthos said cautiously, “if you take my advice, you should never have your thread read again.”
“Do you know what she said?” Reagan managed.
The tutor nodded. “She said the Sight will not deign to look upon those whose threads have been moved.”